I love using that story. I refer to it as "Children Are Bastards"
Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Giles ,'Conversations with Dead People'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
DebetEsse - Oct 22, 2012 6:31:40 pm PDT #19977 of 28476
Woe to the fucking wicked.
Kat - Oct 22, 2012 6:32:16 pm PDT #19978 of 28476
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo
I love that short story.
Oh man, I just finished the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio. I started at the gym and kept reading it after the kids went to bed. What a great book. Made me cry because it's sort of a Gracie-kinda-story. Except the kids at Grace's school love her.
Pix - Oct 22, 2012 7:42:51 pm PDT #19979 of 28476
The status is NOT quo.
I refer to it as "Children Are Bastards"
Bwah! Love that. So true.
Frankenbuddha - Oct 23, 2012 5:56:12 am PDT #19980 of 28476
"We are the Goon Squad and we're coming to town...Beep! Beep!" - David Bowie, "Fashion"
Question... has anyone here ever read We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson? Rec it?
What everyone else said. I loved it and Hill House tons.
I also recommend The Sundial by Jackson if you can find it (I think it's long out of print). Really strange, odd book.
Strix - Oct 23, 2012 6:48:06 am PDT #19981 of 28476
A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to flee from zombies. — Ginger
Hill House consistently gives me the wiggins, and I've read it probably 20 times. It's pitch-perfect.
DavidS - Oct 23, 2012 7:03:26 am PDT #19982 of 28476
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
It has one of the best first paragraphs ever:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Strix - Oct 23, 2012 8:32:47 am PDT #19983 of 28476
A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to flee from zombies. — Ginger
YES YES YES. It is perfect, and I love that opening para.
LOVE.
(I'd love to do a Halloween week read-along of it; wish peeps lived closer...Skype and cocktails, mebbe?)
askye - Oct 23, 2012 8:39:53 am PDT #19984 of 28476
Thrive to spite them
The movie version (the original one) is really creepy too.
DavidS - Oct 23, 2012 8:41:34 am PDT #19985 of 28476
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
Scrappy - Oct 23, 2012 8:49:58 am PDT #19986 of 28476
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
The story is that Jackson based Hill House on the mansion whose grounds became Bennington College. It became the music building [link] . It stands on the the top of a huge hill, with woods behind it and could be kinda creepy. Her husband was a professor at Bennington.
![[link]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bennington_college_jennings_music_building_20041121.jpg){kind=link}